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WNET
Not to be confused with real-life WNET in Newark, NJ WNET is the NBC owned-and-operated station serving Boston, Massachusetts, and the New England market. Broadcasting on channel 25, WNET is owned and operated by the NBC Owned Television Stations subsidiary of NBCUniversal and is part of a triopoly with with Edgartown-licensed Telemundo owned-and-operated station WVEN (channel 51) and Telemundo owned-and-operated station WTMU (channel 59). The three stations share studio facilities with sister regional cable news channel New England Cable News (NECN) on Wells Avenue in Newton, and its transmitter is located in Needham. WNET was launched in 1982 by the New England Television Corporation. WNET was a CBS affiliate from 1982-95 when the CBS Television Group bought WBDK. After purchase, WNET and WBDK swapped affiliates and WNET became an NBC affiliate. WNET is a part of a duopoly in Boston (Adelphia also owns and operates The CW affiliate WKBG). In addition to running the NBC schedule, WNET also airs syndicated programming, including Steve Harvey, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and The Golden Ticket. WNET also operates three subchannels: 25.2 (for Seven Network) 25.3 (for NBC Weather Plus), and 25.4 (for NBC New England Nonstop). History The station first signed on the air on May 22, 1982. It was originally owned by the New England Television Corporation (NETV), who received a new license from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for channel 25 in Boston. Early Days of WNET New England Television's mission from the start was to allocate programming hours to innovative. Notable productions that premiered early on were Look (1982–1984), which began as a two-hour (4–6 p.m.) late afternoon talk and lifestyle show that led into WNET's 6 p.m. newscast. Despite a powerful effort at an entertaining and informative program, and praise from critics, Look was a ratings failure; for its second year, the show was cut back to an hour and renamed New England Afternoon before being dropped. WNET continued to produce talk programs, first with Morning/Live (1984–1987), a half-hour weekday morning talk show hosted by Susan Sikora, and later with Talk of the Town (1988), a similarly structured show hosted byMatt Lauer. NETV also made it an immediate purpose to further diversify the station's workforce, both on-air and behind the scenes. Within WNET's first couple of years, there was an increase of news reporters and anchors of color joining the station (notably including anchor Lester Strong and reporter Amalia Barreda). The commitment to diversity extended itself to a series of new public affairs shows that each targeted a specific ethnic group: Urban Update (with an African-American focus), Revista Hispana, Asian Focusand Jewish Perspective. Other public affairs and newsmagazines launched by WNET included a Sunday morning religious affairs program, Higher Ground; the weekend talk and advice show Boston Common; the Saturday night newsmagazine Our Times; and Studio 7, which focused on the arts. In 1987, another of WNET's ambitious efforts premiered, the hour-long live children's variety show Ready to Go. Featuring Broadway actress/singer Liz Callaway and Scott Reese, who not only hosted but also sang and acted, the program featured an equal mix of entertainment and educational content, along with musical acts and celebrity interviews. The series began as a 6–7 a.m. programming alternative against WBDK and WBNE's morning newscasts, before moving to 7 a.m. in September 1989. On March 24, 1990, after only six months at its new timeslot, the station cut the series back to once-a-week Saturday broadcasts only, before cancelling the show outright in 1991. Sale to Stillwater Broadcasting By 1991, the relationship between majority owner David Mugar and minority owner Robert Kraft had become strained. Kraft, who is the current owner of the New England Patriots, exercised an option that forced Mugar to purchase his shares for an estimated $25 million. This, along with the nearly $100 million debt he held from the 1986 buyout and falling advertising revenues left Mugar strapped for cash. On April 22, 1993, David Mugar entered into an agreement to sell WNET to Stillwater Broadcasting, headed by Lenny Hunter. The purchase was complete in late June. Shortly afterward, Hunter brought in news director Joel Cheatwood. Cheatwood had become infamous in Memphis for his changes to WMEM news operation, which focused on visually intensive, fast-paced newscasts with heavy emphasis on tabloid journalism, particularly covering crime (WMEM – which is a CBS affiliate adopted the format developed by Cheatwood in order to buy viewership for its newscasts, which like WNET, had languished in third place for several years). Cheatwood planned to perform similar changes at WNET. WNET's new format would ultimately be toned down in comparison to WMEM – but still adopted traits from WMEM, including a faster-paced format, increased use of graphics and visuals, and more on-the-scene reporting. While critics were concerned that WNET would lose even more viewers if it were to adopt WMEM's format entirely, WNET quickly rebounded to become the number one newscast in Boston for a period. Switch to NBC In 1994, CBS Television Group announced the purchase of then-NBC affiliate WBDK. WNET became Boston's NBC affiliate on January 2, 1995, replacing WBZ (which had been with the network for 47 years). Since joining NBC, channel 7 has cleared the network's entire programming schedule. WNET became the primary station for the New England Patriots at this time, as the Patriots played in the American Football Conference of the NFL, which had a deal with NBC for the network to air AFC games (thus Boston was not as important as a market for Fox in regards to getting an VHF affiliate). When the AFC package moved to CBS in 1998, this role was reclaimed by WBDK-TV. Between 1996 and 1997, WNET produced a mid-morning weekday newsmagazine for the NBC network called Real Life. Sale to Oakhurst On Sept. 14, 2006, Stillwater Broadcasting agreed to sell the station to Oakhurst Broadcasting for $117 million. NBC Conflict On April 2, 2009, WNET announced that it would not air The Jay Leno Show, when it debuted on NBC in September 2009, electing to replace it with an one-hour news program. The network quickly dismissed any move of Leno to any timeslot other than 10 p.m., stating that WNET's plan was a "flagrant" violation of the station's contract with the network and that it would consider moving the NBC affiliation to another Boston area station, either by creating an owned-and-operated station through an "existing broadcast license" in the market owned by NBC or by seeking inquiries from other stations in the market to acquire the affiliation. WNET began removing all references to the proposed 10 p.m. newscast from its website the next day, and on April 13 the station announced that it had decided to comply and air The Jay Leno Show instead. The fears of possible ratings issues with the primetime talk show as the lead-in for its late newscast would become well-realized, as viewership for WNET's 11 p.m. news plunged to third place (a 20% drop from the previous year) during the November 2009 sweeps period. Other 'first-to-third' drops among NBC affiliates' newscasts in the 11 p.m. slot forced the network on January 10, 2010 to pull Leno from 10 p.m. starting after the 2010 Winter Olympics and move him back to The Tonight Show in a shake-up of its late night schedule. New Owners On Jan. 30, 2016, it was announced that Oakhurst Broadcasting (along with Higgins Broadcasting and Island Television) would merge into Adelphia Communications. Before the announcement, Oakhurst sold the station (and WKBG) to Adelphia. NBCUniversal Ownership On August 12, 2017, Adelphia announced that WNET would be sold to NBCUniversal, thus making WNET an owned-and-operated station and sister to Telemundo owned stations WVEN (channel 51) and WTMU (channel 59). Programming Schedule Gallery WNET 1995-2002.png|WNET Logo (1995-2002) WHAG NBC 25.png| WNET Logo (2002-17) NBC Boston.png|Secondary WNET Logo (2018-present; primary 2017-2018) Category:Channel 25 Category:Boston, MA Category:Massachusetts Category:NBC affiliated stations Category:Former CBS affiliates Category:Television channels and stations established in 1982 Category:Former CBS affiliated stations Category:NBCUniversal